Iris watched it all with vague interest. Her mind felt kilometers away, as if she had left it behind in that wardrobe. In that strange, torch-lit room with Roman.
When Tobias at last parked in front of Lucy’s home, Iris snapped out of her daze. It had been a while since she had slept soundly or eaten a proper meal. None of them in the roadster had, letting their exhaustion and hunger grow long and sharp as fangs within them. There was no time to rest, hardly time to eat. Not with the hounds and an angry god behind them. Tobias had only stopped in Bitteryne to refill the petrol and to let Iris and Attie snag some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee from Lonnie Fielding before they were on the road again.
Attie opened the car’s back door. Iris followed her out, wincing when her feet touched the cobblestones. She hadn’t realized how sore and battered she was until she had stood and was moving again, forcing needlelike blood into her feet.
To Iris’s shock, Lucy was standing on the front porch like a statue, gazing at them. No, it was more like a scowl, and Iris braced herself as Marisol’s sister descended the steps and approached them. She was wearing a black blouse, dark brown trousers, and tightly laced boots that squeaked.
Iris waited, preparing herself for a scolding, but the lines in Lucy’s brows gentled.
“You three all right?” she asked gruffly.
“We’re alive,” Attie said.
Lucy was silent, but her blue eyes rushed over them, as if searching for wounds. Her gaze lingered a bit too long on Iris’s face, and Iris resisted the temptation to touch her tousled hair, her sunburned cheeks, her chapped lips. She knew she must look awful, and she was about to apologize for her appearance when Lucy spoke.
“Come inside,” she said in a softer tone. “I have a pot of tea and some biscuits waiting for you.”
* * *
Marisol and Keegan were truly what were waiting inside, sitting at the kitchen table. Their hands were laced together, their heads bent close to each other as they conversed.
Marisol must not have heard the roadster park on the curb like Lucy had, because she glanced up and gasped when she saw Tobias, Attie, and Iris step into the kitchen.
“Are you hurt?” she demanded, standing in a rush. “Keegan told me the three of you showed up in Hawk Shire, after you told me you wouldn’t pass Winthrop!” But there was hardly any bite in her words, only relief as she embraced the three of them at once, gathering them as a hen does its chicks, warm beneath her wings.
“We’re fine,” Iris said, inadvertently meeting Keegan’s sharp gaze over Marisol’s shoulder.
The brigadier rose from the table but remained silent.
Marisol swung back around, fire in her eyes. “You told me they were in the procession, Keegan. You told me they were safe.”
Lucy set the kettle on the stove, but her eyes darted back and forth, taking note of everything.
“We had an agreement,” Keegan said calmly. If Marisol was fire, she was water. “What happened?”
“A flat tire,” Tobias answered. “We were able to fix it in time but some of Dacre’s soldiers saw us retreat.” He glanced at Iris, as if uncertain what else to say.
Keegan noticed.
“Iris?” the brigadier said.
Iris cracked her knuckles. “Dacre set his hounds loose.”
The kitchen fell deathly quiet. Not even the birds sang their melodies from the backyard.
Marisol laid her hand over her throat, as if hiding the erratic beat of her pulse, and finally said, “The hounds? The hounds chased you?”
“Bexley outran them in his roadster,” Attie stated. Her shoulder was close to Tobias’s; there was only a fraction of space between their fingers, hanging at their sides. “We have all the dents and mud to prove it.”
“There shouldn’t be any dents or mud to prove it,” Marisol said, her cheeks flushing. “There shouldn’t be any hounds, or eithrals, or bombs. You should get to be children, young people, adults who can dream and love and live your lives without all of this … horrible mess.”
Once more, the kitchen fell silent. A breeze stirred the curtains from the open window, and it was a soft reminder of constancy. The sun would continue setting and rising, the moon would persist in waxing and waning, the seasons would bloom and molt, and the war would still rage until one god or both fell to their grave.
The tense lull finally broke when the kettle began to hiss. Lucy moved to tend to it.
“Mari,” Keegan whispered gently.
Marisol sighed, but despair passed over her expression, as if she had been struck by an arrow and didn’t know how to pull it free from her bones. Iris understood, because she felt it also—that heavy, terrible sorrow—but the words were thick, catching behind her teeth. She swallowed them back down and told herself she would type them all out later. When it was dark. When it was just her and the keys and a blank page, waiting for her to mark it with ink.